gone a little longer than such an errand warranted. While they were gone, I asked Bettina if there was anything I could help her with, and since she didn't know me, she had to say there was nothing.
I was glad we hadn't brought the wine when we were offered nothing to drink stronger than iced tea.
Bill and Martin reappeared, Martin wearing a scowl that he made an effort to smooth out. Bettina vanished into the kitchen within a few minutes and was obviously flustered, but I noticed that when the doorbell rang again, it was Bettina who answered it.
I wondered how long the Andersons had been married. They didn't actually talk to each other very much.
To my pleasure, the other dinner guests were Bubba Sewell and his wife, my friend Lizanne Sewell, nee Buckley. Bubba is an up-and-coming lawyer and legislator, and Lizanne is beautiful and full-bodied, with a voice as slow and warm as butter melting on corn. They had married a few months before we had, and the supper they'd given us had been the best party we'd had as an engaged couple.
I gave Lizanne a half-hug, rather than a full frontal hug, befitting our friendship and the length of time we hadn't seen each other. Bettina turned down Lizanne's offer of help as well; so she was certainly determined to keep us "company." We chattered away while our hostess slaved out of sight in the kitchen and dining room. Lizanne inquired about the honeymoon, but without envy: She never wanted to leave the United States, she said. "You don't know where you are in those other countries," she said darkly. "Anything can happen."
I could see Bill Anderson had overheard this and was about to take issue, an incredulous look on his face. (I was beginning not to like Bill, and unless I was mistaken, Martin didn't like him either. I wondered if this was something we would have to do often, dine with people with whom we had nothing in common.) "Are you enjoying not having to go to work every morning?" I asked Lizanne instantly, to spare her discomfort. (Lizanne probably wouldn't care one bit what Bill Anderson or anyone else thought about her opinions, but her husband would.) "Oh... it's all right," Lizanne said thoughtfully. "There's a lot to do on the house, yet. I'm on some good-works committees... that was Bubba's idea." She seemed slightly amused at Bubba's efforts to get her into his own up-and-coming pattern.
We were called to the dining room at that moment, and since I had my own agenda, I was pleased to see I was seated between Martin and Bubba at the round table. After the flurry of passing and serving and complimenting an anxious Bettina on the chicken and rice and broccoli and salad, I quietly asked our state representative if he had been the lawyer in charge of the Julius estate since their disappearance. It was heartless of me, since the conversation had turned to regional football.
"Yes," he said, dabbing his mustache carefully with his napkin. "I handled the house purchase, when Mrs. Zinsner sold the house to T. C. Julius. So after they vanished, Mrs. Totino asked me to continue as the lawyer in the case." "What's the law about disappearances, Bubba?"
"According to Georgia law, missing people can be declared dead after seven years," Bubba told me. "But Mrs. Totino was able to show she was the sole remaining relative of the family, and since she had very little without their support - she'd been living with a sister in New Orleans, scraping by with Social Security - we went to court and got her appointed conservator of the estate, so I could arrange for her to have enough money to live on. After a year, we got a letter of administration, so she could sell the property whenever she could find a buyer. Of course, this is all a matter of public record," he concluded cautiously.
"So in a few months, the Juliuses will be declared dead."
"Yes, then the remainder of their estate will be Mrs. Totino's."
"The house sale money."
"Oh, no. Not just the house sale money. He'd been saving for a while, to start his own business when he retired from the Army." And Bubba indicated by the set of his mouth that this was the end of the conversation about the Julius family's financial resources.
"Did you like him?" I asked, after we'd eaten quietly for a minute. "He was a tough man," Bubba said